


An Open Mind

by consulting_vulcan_jedi_detective



Series: Push and Pull [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Bloodbending, Crossover, Dark, Gen, Prison, Waterbending & Waterbenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 11:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consulting_vulcan_jedi_detective/pseuds/consulting_vulcan_jedi_detective
Summary: There is a prison in the Fire Nation where they keep captured waterbenders from all over the Four Nations. Ivan may not have pure Water Tribe blood in his veins, but he'll be damned if he lets that stop him from getting out of his cage...especially since he's fairly sure that someone else has escaped before.





	

“It’s useless, Ivan,” whispers the Southern waterbender in the cage beside him. “You need to stop fighting them.”

They always drug Ivan first. He is the youngest, and the only one who still protests when they bring the bowl close.

Ivan ignores the other waterbender and wonders if today is the day. He can practically _feel_ the water in the guard’s veins, and he knows that if he reaches out a hand and twitches his fingers, the body of the man holding the drugged water will bend to his will, like a puppet on strings. Just a walking sack of water. It can belong to him, if he wants.

But he’s not certain that he’s ready yet, not quite. So he stills his hand before it can reach, and he leans forward to receive the poison, looking the smirking guard in the eye and wondering if the man can see his death waiting for him.

+

“Why do they do it, Tobo?” Ivan asks weakly, as soon as he resumes consciousness. Ivan suspects that the guards dose him more than the others, because the others are always already awake when he comes to. He doesn’t know why. Maybe his Fire Nation features buy him some misguided form of mercy. “Why do they drug us for the full moon?”

The Southerner turns toward him. “We’re strongest at the full moon. You know that,” he says, the same as he’s said every time Ivan’s asked him. Nobody else has ever given him more of an answer than that.

“Our bending is strongest,” Ivan argues, “but that doesn’t matter unless we have water.” He suspects that somehow, someone has escaped before, or tried, but whenever he’s asked that question before, everyone has clammed up and refused to speak. One time, a guard had heard him ask, and he’d received a beating.

No answer comes from Tobo, who is staring sadly at the ceiling. Ivan sometimes wonders how anyone who calls himself a warrior can give up so totally, like most of the men and women here have.

+

“Water time,” the guard says. Another stands silently beside him, holding the pail. It’s the same pair as last month.

Ivan glances up at the small crack high in the ceiling. The sun is shining brightly in the opening. Ivan’s always suspected that they like to dose the prisoners at noon because it gives plenty of time for the drug to work and ensures that long before the full moon can appear, the waterbenders are soundly unconscious. Noon is not a good time for waterbenders.

It doesn’t matter. It is noon, and Ivan is strong.

“Thank you,” he says, leaning forward to receive the water with a small smile. His hands, locked behind his back in iron, curl.

Both of the guards seize up, frozen in place. Ivan stands, reveling in the power he commands for a moment, closing his eyes. Even if he doesn’t get out, even if he is killed today, he has accomplished something that most people can only imagine: total control over another person’s body.

Then he opens his eyes and makes the first guard unlock his cage and then his shackles. When his wrists are free he kills the guards, cutting off the blood to their brains with a pinch of his fingers. He watches their eyes glaze over until their terror is replaced by unseeingness, and when he knows that they are dead, he swaps clothes with the taller one and levitates the body into his cell. The shorter one he throws into a dark corner behind the cage. When the floor’s patrolling guards finally circle around, they die, too, without ever seeing their killer.

Ivan takes a few seconds just to stretch his limbs, eyelids falling shut again as he feels how weak his legs have become, how thin his arms. And when he opens his eyes and sees the fear on his fellow prisoners’ faces, he knows that his body matters not at all, because he’s the most powerful bender in this place and he’s going to kill every man and woman here not in a cage.

The second floor houses the weaker waterbenders, and apparently they don’t get drugged every month, because there’s just the regular complement of four guards there, and only one even manages to summon a flame before Ivan makes his heart rip itself apart. He decides that this is more efficient than waiting for brain death, and proceeds to do the same to the rest of the soldiers he meets.

Ten night-shift guards on the dormitory floor die in their sleep, blood leaking from the corners of their mouths. Up at the top of the prison, he kills the hawk-keeper before the man even notices that he’s not a guard. He doesn’t look like a waterbender, after all.

When he’s certain that the only living humans in the prison are the prisoners, mostly waterbenders and two mistake cases, he returns to the first floor of cells. Tobo is the only one he even slightly knows, and he thinks that he’ll be responsible enough to help the others get out, so that’s the cage he approaches.

The Southern man is sitting at the back of his cage, face full of fear, and Ivan realizes that he thinks that he’s going to die. So he doesn’t try to talk to him and instead tosses the older man the key ring through the bars of the cage, turns his back, and leaves.

He steps outside in a red uniform and breathes clean, wild air for the first time in three years. The earth is solid and cool beneath his bare feet and his belly is achingly empty but also full of fire. He stretches his arms and back again, finding his full height, and as his blood sings to him he is free.

He can do _anything_.


End file.
